


so look alive, it's much cheaper

by middlecyclone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, resurrecting eddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24620848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/pseuds/middlecyclone
Summary: "You know Orpheus?""Yes," says Ben, "Greek mythology, travels to the underworld to resurrect his dead lover, looks back at the last moment and loses her forever. What about him?""Well, I figured if he can do it—""Well, he didn't really do it, that's kind of the whole point—""—why not me?" Richie finishes. "And it, well, it worked. Kind of."
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 132





	so look alive, it's much cheaper

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Falling Down The Stairs Of Your Smile by The New Pornographers.

Maybe if Richie had had a prophetic fucking dream or some bullshit like that, this would actually be working. But nothing mystical or ominously symbolic had happened to him, for probably the first time in his miserable godforsaken life, so he was just wandering down in the sewers below Derry, alone, crying like a little bitch.

He'd had a hunch. No, maybe hunch wasn't the word—what he'd had was a lot of whiskey and his Lyft driver had been listening to Anaïs Mitchell and he'd had, suddenly, a plan. Not a good plan, not a plan based on any sort of evidence, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and Richie had been getting pretty fucking desperate.

He'd been back in L.A. for two weeks and he hadn't done anything yet except screen calls from his manager and take a lot of really pathetic baths. The crying was pathetic; the whiskey was also pathetic; what really pushed it over the top was the fucking bath bombs. You'd think that when you were mourning the death of the love of your life, you wouldn't still bother to break out the bubbles, but no. Doing his mourning surrounded by blue glitter and the scent of yuzu is actually "self care," as Richie has been led to believe by Twitter and one really weird article in the _Atlantic_. 

That was why he'd been in a Lyft, actually—you could order weed and alcohol and takeout in one app or another, if you tried, but you couldn't get Lush bath bombs on Postmates, no matter _how_ famous you were. So he'd called a rideshare to the fucking mall, and he'd waited at the side of the road to be picked up in David's Kia Sorento, and then he'd heard a "folk opera" about Orpheus and Eurydice and had a life-altering realization.

"Hold up," Richie had said— _shrieked_ —"I changed my mind, take me to LAX, stat!"

"Uh, no, dude," said David. "This is a Lyft share. You don't get to change your mind, that's not how this works."

Richie had looked over. He was, in fact, sharing the back seat with someone his app informed him was called "Mackenzie."

"Are you stupid?" she had asked. "Like genuinely. Are you drunk or are you just stupid?"

Richie had not answered. Richie had leapt out of the car at the next stoplight— _fuck_ his rating—and called a different car in the opposite direction. He had an idea, and it wasn't a good one, but he was going crazy without Eddie, literally losing his damn mind, and if this had half a chance of working—

Richie had gotten on the next flight to Maine. He was going to give this a shot.

The Neibolt house had collapsed, but there was still the back way in through the Barrens. Richie had armed himself with thigh-high waders, a flashlight, and some 7-11 beef jerky, and wandered in.

And here he still was. The sewers were just as dank and horrible as he remembered; every step sent splashes echoing away through the water in all directions, the noises bouncing off and back in a nightmarish wall of sound. Richie felt achingly, agonizingly alone down here, but he also felt—watched, hunted, as if every splash or drip was It coming back, as if around every new corner It would leap out, with Its—

_Teeth—_

Richie was honestly not sure at what point he had started crying. It's possible the tears had started even before he'd gotten to LAX, which would explain the alarmed looks he'd been getting in TSA PreCheck. He's definitely crying now, though, and he can feel the salt drying on his cheeks as he stumbles deeper and deeper into the sewers.

He's not actually sure what he's looking for, precisely. He's hoping he'll know it when he sees it, but it's been hours and hours and nothing is looking promising in the slightest. He’s also starting to suspect he might be going in circles, actually—he’s never been good at directions, and being in an underground labyrinth of concrete isn’t exactly helping matters.

But then he turns a corner and his stomach drops, because suddenly he knows what he’s been looking for. The tunnel ahead is caved-in, destroyed, as if the ground above it has collapsed entirely, because the ground above it has collapsed entirely. He’s under the Neibolt house now, he realizes, or at least what’s left of it—this is where his intuition has led him.

He doesn’t know what to do, but his intuition has not quite deserted him entirely, not yet, so he takes a deep breath and starts talking.

“Eddie, are you there? If you can hear me, I just want to tell you—I’m sorry. God, Eddie, I’m so fucking sorry. I never meant to let anything bad happen to you, and I never meant—” his voice cracks. He swallows. “I never meant to leave you down here. I tried to get you out, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t—I wasn’t strong enough.

“But, Eds—I should have said this before. I don’t know why I didn’t, except that I was too afraid. Well, I’m still afraid now, but the worst has already happened. You’re … dead. You’re fucking dead, Eddie, and everyone expects me to just deal with that and move on and I’m not totally sure I can do that, which is why I’m here, alone, in the worst fucking place on earth, talking to a pile of evil trash, trying to—Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I love you, Eds. That’s all.”

Richie stops; he’s fully sobbing now. 

“Come on, man,” he says, “if—if there’s any extra fucked-up ghost magic shit hanging around down here, then—then follow me back out. I don’t think it works like that, but this is Derry. Weirder things have happened.” 

There’s no reply at first, but then something seems to shift in the pile of rubble ahead—nothing significant, but enough that Richie takes an uneasy step backwards, and then another. 

“Okay,” he says to himself, “I guess that’s as much of a sign as I’m getting,” and he knows how this has to go. 

He turns around, and walks out, and he doesn’t— _doesn’t_ —look back.

There’s a splash from behind him, and Richie’s heart simultaneously leaps in hope as the bottom drops out of his stomach in terror. It could be Eddie behind him, it really could—but it could also be something much, much worse.

And as Richie walks, he suddenly starts thinking about where he’d even gotten this idea from. He wasn’t exactly a big fan of Greek mythology—what if, somehow, this was Pennywise fucking with him? The clown was dead, he was sure of that, _positive,_ but…

But.

He can’t worry about that now; he just has to find his way out of the sewers and he’ll deal with the rest when he gets there. He tries retracing his steps, but his memory is nearly as bad as his internal compass, so he can’t actually tell if it's working. He just keeps walking and walking and every few feet he stops, pauses, listens behind him. Sometimes there’s a dull splash, or two, or three, and sometimes there’s nothing, and sometimes—

Sometimes he can swear he hears breathing, either in the distance or right behind him, right in his ear, and that’s the worst of all. 

Well, nearly the worst. The actual worst is when Richie finally sees a glimmer of daylight in the distance, and breaks into a jog, or as much of a jog as an out-of-shape middle aged man can manage while wearing fishing waders. And then he takes one step a little wrong and his feet slide out from under him and he falls flat on his face in two feet of graywater.

“Fuck!” he yells, which is a mistake, because his face is underwater. Richie’s certainly not a germaphobe, not like Eddie is— _was_ —but even he has limits, and getting sewer water in his mouth is one of those.

“Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew,” he says, struggling to his feet, “this is so fucking disgusting,” and as he gets his feet beneath him he realizes that there’s actually something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and his legs go sliding out from under him _again_. He lands on his ass this time, which is a little better. Kind of. 

“Oh, come on,” he says, pathetically. Richie shudders and contorts himself, trying to figure out what nightmarish sewer dregs are currently stuck to his boot, which is not something he imagined he would ever have to do, but he never thought he’d have to bully a space clown to death, either.

He finally manages to bend enough to investigate. It takes several minutes. “ _You_ try doing fucking yoga in rubber pants, dude,” he mutters to nobody, leaning against the wall of the sewer and determinedly not turning around, but when he realizes what it is, an icy bolt of fear shoots up his spine.

It’s a banana peel, yellow and perfect, looking more like a cartoon of a banana peel than actual compost, and he can’t help thinking—don’t _clowns—_

Pennywise had had balloons, and music, and the smell of caramel corn, but he’d never done banana peels before. And plenty of garbage ended up down here, including plenty of food waste, he was sure—there were a hundred perfectly rational explanations for this—

Richie hears, distantly, in the echoes of his own memory, his own high pre-teen voice yelling _"banana-heels"_ at Henry Bowers, and—

Forget jogging. Richie breaks into a full-on sprint.

He makes it out of the sewer and the light nearly blinds him but he keeps going, ten steps further, then twenty, thirty, a hundred yards. He's not sure when it's safe to turn around, to see if he's actually managed to resurrect Eddie, but he's out of the water now, the grass is up past his knees. It's as safe as it'll ever be, he figures, and so he finally, _finally_ , turns around.

And there's a figure slowly making its way out of the sewers. It worked, it _worked—_ Richie yells, overwhelmed with elation, and starts running back towards him, but then he realizes—

It's not Eddie.

"Hey, Richie," Stan says, breathing heavily, "slow down, would you? I was literally just dead, it wasn't great for my cardiovascular fitness."

"Oh," Richie says, "uh. Fuck, dude."

He’s—huh. He’s happy to see Stan, fucking _thrilled_ , but he’s also sad he isn’t Eddie, and he feels horribly guilty that he’s sad Stan isn’t Eddie, and also Stan got kind of hot, which he didn’t see coming, and fuck, fuck, he’s barely thought about Stan since Eddie died, and Stan was his _best friend_ , what does that mean about what a terrible person he is, and why is it Stan anyway, what does this mean, what does any of this mean—

Richie finally reaches Stan and he stops thinking and just wraps both his arms around him in a bear hug before bursting into loud, ugly sobs.

“Nice to see you, Stan,” Stan says drily, “glad you’re alive, Stan.”

"I missed you," Richie says, "I—fuck, Stan, I just—I really fucking missed you."

“I have to be real with you here, Richie. I did not miss you one bit.”

* * *

Richie had gone straight from the Bangor airport to the Barrens, so now he gets the privilege of trying to check into the Derry Town House with one whiny undead man in tow, both of them covered practically neck to ankle in sewage.

The Derry Town House is not exactly thrilled about this, but Richie doesn’t give a single fuck. He lets Stan have the first shower, because Stan was literally dead three hours ago, and spends the whole time he’s in there anxiously knocking on the door every 90 seconds, just in case, because Stan doesn't necessarily have the greatest track record with bathing. Stan emerges clean, dripping, and furious but Richie went to—well, not hell, but _somewhere_ for him, he’s not taking any chances.

And then he does what he probably should have done ages ago, and calls Bev.

“Hi, Richie,” she says when she picks up, voice kind. “Are you okay? You haven’t been answering my texts.”

“Haha, yeah,” Richie says weakly, “I’ve been kind of, uh, busy.”

“You? Busy? Are you working again?” Bev sounds almost hopeful at that, glad to hear that he’s been doing something somewhat productive with his pathetic excuse for a life.

Richie is sorry to disappoint her. “Not … exactly. I uh—went to—uh. Derry.”

There’s a loud crashing noise, then, as if she’s dropped her phone on the floor. 

“Ben,” he hears Bev yell, distantly, “get in here, right now—what the _fuck_ , Richie!” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Richie says, “and I haven’t seen a single clown in the place. Well, maybe one clown, but I’m sure it was unrelated, y'know, it was doing more of a tango than whatever Pennywise was up to—"

"Richie!"

"Right, yeah, sorry Bev, so I just—well, I had this idea. You know Orpheus?"

"Yes," says Ben, echoing a little, and Richie guesses he's on speaker phone now. "Greek mythology, travels to the underworld to resurrect his dead lover, looks back at the last moment and loses her forever. What about him?"

"Well, I figured if he can do it—"

"Well, he didn't really do it, that's kind of the whole point—"

"—why not me?" Richie finishes. "And it, well, it worked. Kind of."

There's a silence.

"What do you mean, kind of," Bev says, and her voice sounds, well, horrible. It's truly one of the worst things Richie has ever heard. "Richie, you need to be honest with me. Did you—did Eddie come back—wrong?"

"Wait," Stan says, "Eddie's dead?"

There's a beat. Then Bev drops her phone again.

"Stan?" Ben shouts, "Is that Stan?"

"What the _fuck_ happened while I was dead?"

* * *

"So, Eddie died," Stan repeats.

"Uh, yeah," Richie says.

"And you tried to resurrect him by reenacting a Greek myth."

"Pretty much."

"And you have no idea why you thought that would work?"

"Probably some deadlights shit, but you can never be sure."

"And so when you tried to resurrect Eddie, you got me."

"Yeah."

"Fuck you, man."

"Hey!"

"Eddie dies and you go to the center of the earth for him! I die and you don't even send my wife a condolence card!"

"To be fair," Patty says over Stan's phone, which has somehow survived being resurrected and where Stan has put her on speaker, "it's not like he had my address."

"Eh, Mike had your address, I could've asked," Richie concedes. "Wait, why am I taking your side?!"

"Seriously, Richie," Stan says, "bros before hoes."

"Hey, you're alive now and Eddie is still fucking dead, so I actually don't think beggars get to be choosers in this case," Richie says.

"He's got a point, honey," Patty agrees.

"Okay, guys," Mike says from Richie’s phone, because none of them could figure out how to set up a conference call, "can we focus? I've been doing some research, and I've come up with a theory."

"Hit me, Mikey."

"I think you were on the right track before, with going into the earth to look for Eddie. I just don't think you went deep enough. You said you went down into the sewers, to where the Neibolt house collapsed?"

"Yeah," said Richie.

"Maybe you just need to go deeper this time."

Richie sighs. "This isn't sounding like something I want to do, Mike."

"I think you need to go all the way back down," Mike says. "Like. _All_ the way back down."

"Fucking—why?!"

"I have this theory," Mike explains, "that...well...the more you love something, the further you have to dig to get it back."

"Wow," Stan says drily. "So now even the Greek gods know you love Eddie more than me. Fantastic."

"At least you don't have to deal with the Greek gods knowing you're gay and making you go into caves about it," Richie complains.

"Oh, are you gay?" Mike says, startled.

Stan stares at the phone. "You're all such idiots."

"Thank you for uh—trusting me, Richie," Mike says, "I'm very proud of—"

"NOPE," Richie says loudly, "I'm not doing this, I'm going back to the fucking clown cavern just so I don't have to listen to this, next time I'm coming out via e-card—"

"Wait, Richie," Mike says, "Give us a day or two, we can get everyone back to Derry for backup."

"Pretty sure this is something I'm gonna have to do alone," Richie says, "but uh—thank you. For, uh, you know, oh _fuck_ this," and hangs up.

"Very emotionally mature," Stan says.

"Stan, you are not allowed to go into the damn sewer," Patty says, and Richie jumps.

"Jesus Christ, I forgot you were here," he mutters.

"Don't worry, babe," Stan says, "I would not go in that sewer for all the money in the world."

* * *

Richie doesn't really want to go in the sewer either, but seeing as apparently Mike and Persephone and everyone else involved are now very aware that he would do pretty much anything for half a chance of getting Eddie back, he puts the waders back on and gets in there.

It's actually less horrible this time, which is probably a sign that Richie is spending too much time in various drains. This isn't exactly something he wanted to get used to, but this is his life now apparently.

He finds the collapsed section of tunnel under the Neibolt house in about an hour, less than a quarter of the time it had taken last time, and Richie can't help but have a horrible feeling that something—someone?—has been, well, _summoning_ him there. He'd definitely wasted hours and hours going in circles last time but today it's like he has some sort of sixth sense telling him which turns to make. It's not that he doesn't appreciate it, really, it's just that it's also giving him the fucking creeps. 

Richie looks at the rubble and sighs. "Go deeper," he says to himself, "right," and gets to work.

Thank God he'd had a bit role in an X-Men movie last summer—these rocks are _heavy_ , and he knows there's no way he'd be able to lift more than half a dozen of them if he hadn't been put through the Superhero Arm Training ringer a few months ago. But now all the time spent training with Petra is coming in handy for the first time in, well, ever, since he’s pretty sure all his lines had been edited out of the final cut of the movie anyway.

He heaves an especially heavy rock that does actually twinge something in his lower back that Richie can’t help but hope wasn’t important, and then there’s a really ominous grinding noise and the pile of rocks drops down suddenly, like a sinkhole is opening up below, and Richie is jolted roughly to his knees.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, and then the rocks are clattering over and over each other, down and down, and it’s all he can do to kneel pathetically and get his arms over his head because if he gets concussed down in the sewers that’s it, that’s the end of Richie Tozier, there’s not going to be any coming back from that.

But then it all stops and he looks, tentatively, at what the chaos hath wrought. 

Stairs. There’s a narrow, haphazard spiral staircase winding down into the unholy cavern, formed as the stones fell into its depths, and he sighs. “This is probably a really fucking terrible idea,” Richie mutters to himself, “like there’s no possible explanation for this that doesn’t totally suck and end with me dead,” because there is never, _never_ a good reason for things to get mystically convenient in Derry.

And yet—Richie takes a deep breath, hoping it won’t be his last, and then he’s on the steps and there is, really and truly, no going back.

* * *

So Richie falls down the stairs.

It’s going relatively well for a while, but they’re less “stairs” in the traditional sense and more an uneven collection of vague, unsecured ledges, and thigh-high rubber waders are not exactly footwear that’s overly conducive to agile maneuverings. He wobbles, basically, and then he very much does fall down. 

He made it well over halfway, though, so it’s not as extensive a tumble as it could have been. He doesn’t even seriously injure himself—he’ll be more bruise than not, tomorrow, but he can still walk, albeit a bit pathetically.

The clown chamber looks much the same, if about thirty percent more collapsed, which sucks. Richie had really hoped to never in his life have to see this place again, but you truly cannot always get what you want, so he takes a deep breath and walks over to where—

To Eddie’s—

No, fuck, he can’t do it. He goes to the rock formation in the center of the cavern instead. 

“Persephone,” he calls out, voice echoing, “or uh, whoever you are, if you’re like. Real. I went deeper.”

Nobody answers. Nothing happens. Richie feels like an idiot. 

“Come on,” he whines, “I already poured my heart out earlier. I love Eddie, okay, I said it. And you gave me Stan back, so clearly you’re listening to something I say. Even though, admittedly, I didn’t ask for Stan back. Not that I’m complaining, super glad to have Stan, but I went down that entire staircase so if I could also have Eddie back that would be super great.”

There’s still nothing. 

“Fuck,” Richie says, and then again, louder. “Fuck!”

He’d told Mike and Stan that he didn’t want to go back into the sewer, which was true, because the sewer sucked. But what he really didn’t want to do was, well, this.

He goes to the corner where he knows Eddie’s body is still lying, somewhere. It feels like his heart is simultaneously being crushed inside his chest and about to fling itself out of his mouth. He wants to scream, or cry, or vomit, or possibly all three at the same time. 

And then he sees it. There’s a flash of color in the darkness that can only be the fabric of Eddie’s stupid yellow polo and this is it, this is his limit. Richie can fly across the country, become covered in graywater, attempt to excavate an entire single family home’s worth of bricks, get nearly crushed to death by a cave-in, and tumble down approximately twenty flights of stone steps. Sure, fine—maybe not top of his to-do list, but he’d do it all a hundred times over again if it meant half a chance of getting Eddie back. But this? He’s not strong enough.

“Eddie,” he says softly, “I—Eds, I never should have left you here, I—” 

He turns away, lifting his glasses up to furiously wipe away the tears collecting in his eyes. “God damn it,” he says, “Eddie, I’m just so sorry.”

“Come on, man,” Eddie says, “don’t rub your eyes, do you know how filthy your hands must be?”

Richie whips his head up. There’s nothing there. Is this it? Has he finally lost his entire mind? It honestly wouldn’t be the most surprising thing to happen today, he has to admit to himself.

And then he realizes, shoving his glasses back on, that there’s truly _nothing_ there—no scrap of yellow fabric sticking out from underneath a pile of rocks. 

“Oh,” Richie says, “uh, okay,” and starts walking, very carefully, back towards the steps.

He probably should have reviewed the myth more thoroughly than just scanning the Wikipedia page on his phone, but Mike had made it very clear: no matter what, he must not turn around. He must _not_ look back. He’s a little worried he’s already screwed it up but he figures if he makes kind of a big 270 degree spiral instead of a sharp turn he’ll probably be covered against accusations of “turning.”

Maybe.

He’d been grateful, earlier, for his superhero movie training, but roughly three minutes in he’s starting to wish that he’d also spent a little more time on the Stairmaster and not just working on his bench press. His legs are burning and he’s panting so loudly that he wouldn’t be able to hear a thing behind him, even if there had been anything to hear. Mike had told him that details varied—sometimes there were footsteps, faint breaths, but sometimes there was nothing, and he wasn’t to take silence as an indicator it wasn’t working. 

He was _not,_ at any cost, to look back. 

It’s honestly not even tempting, at the moment, because all he can think about is how sweaty he is and how much his thighs hurt. Okay, no, that’s a lie, he’s still mostly thinking about the way Eddie’s voice had sounded back in the clown cave.

It had definitely been present. Definitely, maybe. And it was almost certainly Eddie’s, Richie was positive, or at least half-sure, except that now that he was focusing on it can he even actually remember the sound of Eddie’s voice? Or the smell of his stupid bougie cologne? Can he even still picture Eddie’s face?

Okay, no, good, he can still picture Eddie’s face, the way it looked when he was dying in Richie’s arms, with the bandage on his cheek and the life draining out of his eyes—no, _no_ , the way it looked when he was thirteen and laughing triumphantly, shoving Richie out of a hammock; the way he looked at Richie at the Jade of the Orient, the first time they'd seen each other in decades. The way his eyes would always light up, possessed with an almost demonic glee whenever Richie gave him an opportunity to make fun of him; the sad quirk to his mouth whenever one of Richie’s rebuttals hit too close to home; the way he would square his shoulders whenever he needed to be brave.

That gets him up half the stairs, and then he remembers vaguely that Orpheus was a musician or something so maybe he should start singing too, and so he starts loudly singing “Eye of the Tiger” and two dozen or so renditions of that get him up the rest of them.

At that point, he’s been through the sewers so often in the past two days that he actually thinks he’s starting to recognize landmarks, which is just fucked beyond belief, but fine. He can appreciate the usefulness. He only has to halfheartedly mumble his way through “Lose Yourself” eight and a half times until he can see light in the distance.

This is when Orpheus fucked it up, but Richie is not that stupid. He is learning from the mistakes of others. He is not even _tempted_ , and he is outside before he even knows it, and then—

Huh.

“Eddie?” he says. “Are you there?”

“If you say ‘mom’s spaghetti’ one more time I swear I will kill you,” Eddie says.

“I fucked your mom’s spaghetti,” Richie says reflexively, if nonsensically, and then—

“Oh my God, Eddie, did it work?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

But Richie has not actually turned around yet, because he is not taking any chances. Sure, _he’s_ out of the sewers, but what if Eddie is like fifty feet behind him and still inside? What if it’s the nature of the beast to always blow it at the last second? What if it doesn’t count until he’s out of the stream, out of the Barrens, out of the Derry town limits entirely?

So he keeps going.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Eddie says, and it doesn’t _sound_ like he’s fifty feet behind Richie. It sounds like he’s right behind Richie, impossibly close.

But Richie just doesn’t trust himself. “I’m making sure,” he says, and trudges through the grass, until he’s back at his rental car. 

“Get in the back seat,” he says, eyes screwed shut, “I’m not looking at you until we’ve crossed Maine state lines.”

“Like hell am I getting in a car with you when you won’t look in the rear view mirror,” Eddie says, and then there are hands on Richie’s face, _warm_ hands, _alive_ hands.

“Look at me, Richie,” Eddie says softly. “I’m alive. It worked. It’s safe to look now.”

Richie just shakes his head, eyes still closed. He’s come too far to lose him now.

“Richie,” Eddie says, “Richie, _babe_ , you did it. You can stop now. You have to just trust me.”

“How do I know this isn’t a trick?” Richie asks, voice quavering. “How do I know you aren’t the dumb fucking clown?”

And that’s when Eddie kisses him. “Would the clown do that?” he asks.

"I sure hope not."

"I love you too, you idiot."

“So you did hear me,” Richie says. 

“Both times. And a good thing, too, because today's version kinda sucked. Now open your eyes.”

And Richie does.

It’s Eddie, filthy and exhausted and covered in blood but smiling, hair riffling in the breeze, chest rising and falling with breaths and fully, undeniably, alive.

Richie looks at him, _looks_ at him, and counts out loud, “One, two, three,” and when he gets to fourteen and Eddie is still standing there that’s when he kisses him back.

* * *

“Really didn’t think that would work,” Mike observes, voice crackly on speakerphone.

“What the fuck, man! Why did you send me down there, then?”

Richie can’t see him, but he can just sense that Mike is shrugging. “Figured it was worth a shot.”

“Well, I appreciate it,” Eddie says. He’s wrapped in every extra towel Richie could charm out of the Derry Town House front desk worker, which was exactly two extra towels. For some mysterious reason, the fact that he’d dripped sewer water all over their lobby twice in two days had not especially endeared hotel staff towards Richie and his guests.

On the plus side, Eddie was freshly showered and sitting on Richie’s bed, naked except for the towels, because he rather fairly refused to put back on the disgusting outfit he’d died in. On the downside, Stan was also sitting on Richie’s bed, so he couldn’t even do anything about it. 

“I’m so glad you’re alive, honey,” Bev says tearfully. “I also didn’t really think it would work, but I’ve never been so happy to be proven wrong.”

Eddie, with his fancy Wall Street job, actually knew how to set up a conference call, which apparently just means that all Richie’s friends can now insult him from a single device. “C’mon, guys, didn’t any of you have any faith?”

There is a suspicious silence.

“That’s just rude,” Stan says. “He literally resurrected me yesterday. Did you all forget about that?”

“Kinda thought that might have been a fluke,” Ben admits.

“I think I missed something,” Bill says. “Was that Stan? Is Stan alive?”

“You didn’t even tell Bill?!”

“Well, I’m very proud of you, Richie,” Bev says hastily, cutting off that line of inquiry. “It can’t have been easy, to go back there alone.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Richie agrees, and he’s not especially proud of the way his voice cracks, but it really can’t be helped at this point.

Stan stands up. “Alright, Patty’s flight should be landing soon so I’m gonna go pick her up. Richie, gimme your keys. And I want everyone to know I’m feeling extremely unappreciated.”

“Stan got kinda mean,” Richie says after the door shuts behind him.

“He was always kinda mean,” says Mike, “that’s why we like him so much.”

“He got kinda hot, too,” Eddie says.

“Thank you!” Richie crows. “I didn’t want to be the first one to say it, but—”

“No, I found his Instagram, he definitely got hot,” Bev agrees. 

“Guys, can someone please fill me in?” Bill says plaintively.

“Take it offline,” Eddie says, “it was great to hear from you guys, but I have to end this call, I need to take care of some stuff,” and then he hangs up.

“It’s very sexy when you talk like a corporate business drone,” Richie says. “Also what errands can you possibly have to run? You literally don’t have any pants.”

“That’s on the list,” Eddie says. “One, get clothes. Two, get a divorce. Three, have sex with the man I’ve been in love with since age ten.”

Richie blinks at him. “Oh. Uh.”

Eddie flops back on the bed. “You know, I really thought that if this ever happened it would really be more emotionally fraught, but I think dying gave me a kind of—perspective, maybe. I only realized I was gay about forty minutes ago but I’ve decided to just go with it.”

“I—forty minutes?”

Eddie sits up again, his towel slipping with the movement, and the flare of heat Richie feels at the sight is only mostly erased by the scar tissue spanning Eddie’s chest. “I’ve been in love with you basically my whole life, but I was lying to myself. I didn’t realize it until I pulled you out of the deadlights, and then I died pretty much immediately after that, so I didn’t exactly have time to have a sexuality crisis. So I had it in the shower instead, and I came to the conclusion that I’m gay and my marriage is a sham.”

“Huh,” Richie says. He’s really starting to miss being able to speak in anything but monosyllables.

“I—God, man, I don’t know, my entire life I’ve been so emotionally repressed I could barely even acknowledge to myself that I had any feelings, let alone tell anyone else what they were. But taking a clown spider leg to the chest kinda knocked it outta me.”

“I can see that,” Richie says feebly.

“So. How about it?”

“I’m pretty sure that if we try and have sex right now I’m gonna cry on you,” Richie says honestly.

“I think I’m okay with that.” 

Richie blinks. “Well. If you’re okay with that.”

And that’s when Eddie tackles him.

Okay, no, it’s not exactly a tackle. It’s more of a really aggressive, mouth-first hug. The long and short of it is, one way or another Richie ends up flat on his back on the hotel bed, Eddie fully naked and hovering above him. One of Eddie’s vaguely damp towels is stuck under his ass and Richie has literally never cared less about anything in his entire life.

“I don’t—” Eddie says, in between kisses, “I don’t really know what to do.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job of it,” Richie manages, breathless.

“You know what I mean,” he says. “I’ve never really… you know.”

“Are you seriously telling me you’re a married virgin?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No! Myra and I … a few times. But I assume it’s different with a man.”

“Right,” Richie says, “well, I’m not exactly a gay sex expert. I mean, I’ve had it. But never with anyone I actually liked, so I guess we’ll have to be the blind leading the blind here.”

“What do you want?” Eddie asks.

“Just you,” Richie says, raw and honest. “I just want you as close to me as possible.”

Eddie’s already naked and now he’s furiously unbuttoning Richie’s jeans and pulling his shirt off. Richie intends to help, really he does, but his hands feel huge and clumsy and it’s basically all he can do to just lie there and watch Eddie.

And then all his clothes are off, finally, and he can feel Eddie hard against him and it is quite probably the best thing Richie has ever experienced in his entire, admittedly quite pathetic, life.

“God, Eddie,” he moans, “I can’t—”

“Yeah,” Eddie pants, “I know. Me too.”

“You’re so fucking hot,” Richie says, running his hands up and down Eddie’s abs because of fucking course Eddie has actual abs, everyone has abs except Richie, even Kumail Nanjiani has abs now—

“Stop talking about Kumail Nanjiani while I’m trying to fuck you,” Eddie says. “And you’re hot, shut up, don’t make me tell you about all the times I jerked off to your Netflix specials.”

“You—what?”

“I said don’t make me talk about it, it’s embarrassing, you’re wearing the worst fucking shirts in all of them—”

“No, the other thing.”

“I actually don’t think I can fuck you in this hotel room,” Eddie says, “there’s no lube or condoms or anything and I’m not willing to get creative.”

“I don’t care,” Richie says, and grabs Eddie’s dick. “We’ll figure something else out.”

“No, really, I’m not risking—”

“I meant handjobs, not doing weird stuff with the free conditioner.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, “well, that’s a different matter.”

“Seriously,” Richie says, earnest this time, “you are really so fucking hot, you know that? When I was a disgusting horny adolescent I used to jerk off like eight times a day thinking about those tiny shorts you used to have. Do you still have those, actually? I really imprinted on them.”

“I—what? No!”

“That’s fine,” Richie says, “because what I meant was I really imprinted on you.”

Eddie moans at that, his eyes fluttering shut, and Richie stops talking, stops doing anything except focusing on his hand around Eddie’s dick, trying to make him come.

“You feel so good,” Eddie says, “you just—don’t stop, God, you—”

“Come on, babe,” Richie says, “come for me,” and then Eddie does, gasping, all over Richie’s chest.

“God,” Eddie says, after a few moments, “that’s so disgusting, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think it’s disgusting,” Richie says, and he’s jacking himself off now, because— “I think it’s so hot, having you all over me. Wanna keep you forever, just—”

“Okay, no,” Eddie says, knocking his hand away and taking over, “I’m interested in what you’re trying to say here, but showers are important, Tozier.”

Richie has no idea why Eddie is talking about showers. Richie cannot think about anything that is not Eddie’s hand or Eddie’s mouth or Eddie’s—just, all of Eddie. It would be embarrassing if he weren’t already too far gone to care.

“I love you,” Eddie whispers in his ear, “I love you, I love you, I love you so much, you idiot,” and then Richie is coming too, harder than he has in years, and the inside of his brain is finally, briefly, quiet.

“I thought you were gonna cry,” Eddie says eventually, going to get a washcloth to clean them both up.

“Yeah, well,” Richie says, “you can’t have everything.”

He turns off the light after Eddie’s done. The hotel sheets are rough and cool beneath his bare skin, but he can feel Eddie’s body heat even from the other side of the queen mattress and it is such a relief. He has to double- and triple-check, every single minute that they aren’t actively touching, that it is still Eddie, that he is still alive.

“I said this before,” Richie says, into the silence, “but when you were dead. I really just lost it, Eds. I literally could not function in a world that didn’t have you in it.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything.

“I just need you to know that whatever you’re imagining, it was worse than that. I went into the Derry Municipal Sewer System twice, to get you back, and yet every second I spent in those sewers was better than all the time I spent out of it because at least while I was down there I had at least a faint glimmer of hope that maybe you wouldn’t be dead forever. And now you’re actually back and I just don’t know how to deal with it. I’m—I’m pretty messed up. Like, emotionally. And also I think I strained my back. But mostly emotionally.”

“I don’t even know why I’m alive, Richie,” Eddie says softly, “except that somehow you loved me enough to bring me back, and that’s… I know that I wasted my entire life living a lie for reasons that didn’t matter. This is my second chance, and I’m not going to make the same mistakes again.”

Richie takes a deep breath and turns, wraps his arms around Eddie, who melts into the touch.

“Thank you for not being dead,” he whispers.

Eddie laughs, a little tearful. “Anytime,” and they drift off like that, together.

* * *

Richie wakes up. The sun is in his eyes and Eddie is drooling on his shoulder. It is, more or less, the best day of his life. 

**Author's Note:**

> a lot of this doesn't make sense and that's because I simply do not care about the internal narrative consistency of orpheus myths/the geography of stephen king's murder clown housecave/why richie would bring his passport to the mall/if anyone's clothes at any given time are clean or not/why stan would be in maine/whether or not you can run a conference line from an iphone. and neither should you!


End file.
